MADDOW: When you -- PAUL: And I'm in favor of --* I'm opposed to any form of governmental racism or discrimination or segregation, all of the things we fought in the South, in fact, like I say, I think it's a stain on our history that we went 120 years from when the North desegregated and when those battles were fought in the North. And I like to think that, you know, even though I was a year old at the time, that I would have marched with Martin Luther King because I believed in what he was doing.*
MADDOW: But if you were in the -- (CROSSTALK) PAUL: But, you know, most of the things he was fighting -- most of the things he -- MADDOW: I`m sorry to interrupt you. Go on, sir. PAUL: *Most of the things he were fighting -- most of the things that he was fighting were laws. He was fighting Jim Crow laws. He was fighting legalized and institutional racism. And I'd be right there with him. * MADDOW: But maybe voting against the Civil Rights Act which wasn't just about governmental discrimination but public accommodations, the idea that people who provided services that were open to the public had to do so in a nondiscriminatory fashion. Let me ask you a specific so we don't get into the esoteric hypotheticals here. PAUL: Well, there's 10 -- there's 10 different -- there's 10 different titles, you know, to the Civil Rights Act, and nine out of 10 deal with public institutions. And I'm absolutely in favor of one deals with private institutions, and had I been around, I would have tried to modify that. But you know, the other thing about legislation -- and this is why it's a little hard to say exactly where you are sometimes, is that when you support nine out of 10 things in a good piece of legislation, do you vote for it or against it? And I think, sometimes, those are difficult situations. *What I was asked by "The Courier-Journal" and I stick by it is that I do defend and believe that the government should not be involved with institutional racism or discrimination or segregation in schools, busing, all those things. *But had I been there, there would have been some discussion over one of the titles of the civil rights. And I think that's a valid point, and still a valid discussion, because the thing is, is if we want to harbor in on private businesses and their policies, then you have to have the discussion about: do you want to abridge the First Amendment as well. Do you want to say that because people say abhorrent things -- you know, we still have this. We're having all this debate over hate speech and this and that. Can you have a newspaper and say abhorrent things? Can you march in a parade and believe in abhorrent things, you know? So, I think it's an important debate but should be intellectual one. It's really tough to have an intellectual debate in the political sense because what happens is it gets dumbed down. It will get dumb down to three words and they'll try to run on this entire issue, and it's being brought up as a political issue. I think if you listen to me, I think you should understand that -- I think you do, I think you're an intelligent person. I like being on your show. But I think that what is the totality of what I'm saying -- am I a bad person? Do I believe in awful things? No. I really think that discrimination and racism is a horrible thing. And I don't want any form of it in our government, in our public sphere. MADDOW: The reason that this is something that I'm not letting go even though I now realize it would make the conversation more comfortable to move on to other things and I think this is going to be a focus for national attention on you, I guess until there's at least clarity on it, is that issue of the tenth, not the nine, but the tenth out of the 10 portions -- proportions of the -- the tenth of the Civil Rights Act that you would want to have discussions about. As I understand it, what you`re saying, that's the portion of the Civil Rights Act that said you can't actually have segregated lunch counters here at your private business. I mean, when Bob Jones University in the year 2000 -- PAUL: Well, it's interesting. Actually, it's even -- (CROSSTALK) MADDOW: Hold on just one second. Until the year 2000, Bob Jones University, a private institution, had a ban on interracial dating at their school, their private institution. If Bob Jones University wanted to bring that back now, would you support their right to do so? PAUL: Well, I think it's interesting because the debate involves more than just that, because the debate also involves a lot of court cases with regard to the commerce clause. For example, right now, many states and many gun organizations are saying they have a right to carry a gun in a public restaurant because a public restaurant is not a private restaurant. Therefore, they have a right to carry their gun in there and that the restaurant has no right to have rules to their restaurant. So, you see how this could be turned on many liberal observers who want to excoriate me on this. Then to be consistent, they'd have to say, oh, well, yes, absolutely, you've got your right to carry your gun anywhere because it's a public place. So, you see, when you blur the distinction between public and private, there are problems. When you blur the distinction between public and private ownership, there really is a problem. A lot of this was settled a long time ago and isn't being debated anymore. MADDOW: But it could be brought up at any moment. I mean, if there - - let's say there's a town right now and the owner of the town's swimming club says we're not going to allow black kids at our pool, and the owner of the bowling alley in town says, we're not actually going to allow black patrons, and the owner of the skating rink in town says, we're not going to allow black people to skate here. And you may think that's abhorrent and you may think that's bad business. But unless it's illegal, there's nothing to stop that -- there's nothing under your world view to stop the country from re-segregating like we were before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -- PAUL: Right. MADDOW: -- which you're saying you've got some issues with. PAUL: Well, the interesting thing is, is that there's nothing right now to prevent a lot of re-segregating. We had a lot of it over the last 30 or 40 years. What I would say is that we did some very important things in the '60s that I'm all in favor of and that was desegregating the schools, desegregating public transportation, use public roads and public monopolies, desegregating public water fountains. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:319379 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
